


Turn around all their limit signs

by meeks00



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-05
Updated: 2010-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meeks00/pseuds/meeks00
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His thumbs depress the soft tissue of its skin. His right hand’s fingertips can feel the heartbeat through its back. It weighs more than he thought it would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn around all their limit signs

The woman holds the baby up like an offering, and all Brad can think about is what his hands have touched in the past few weeks. Nothing on his list was animate, sentient.

His hands have carried his heavy weapon, fired shots with the burn of sharp recoils, grasped the end of his shovel to dig ranger graves. They’re dry from sand burn, pink skin camouflaged by gun grease, calloused from rough work — covered with remnants of blood shadows from the mess of his actions.

His hands are used to the feel of metal, expelled cordite, dirt and sand, but when the woman comes up from his nine and holds the baby up like an offering, Brad isn't sure he's capable of accepting the writhing bit of life into his grasp quite yet.

She speaks to him, and her baby stares at him with almond-shaped brown eyes. Its face is dirty from tears and snot and wear and tear from the miles it has seen. It wears a scarf.

“Wh — ” he begins, but she cuts him off with a nod and words he doesn’t understand, but he does understand the insistence in her gesture and expression. “Yeah, well don’t — ” he tries again, but she’s forceful.

The baby gurgles — doesn’t speak her language yet, will probably never speak Brad’s, but Brad thinks maybe it’s uncomfortable. He knows the feeling as the woman nudges the kid against his chest.

"Don't give that thing to me," he says. The woman continues to speak. "Yeah, I understand. Ma'am, I understand."

The baby dribbles spit, and its hand trails on his Kevlar and over his spare magazines. Brad holds his hands away, doesn’t want to touch it.

Turns out he doesn't have a choice. The woman pushes the kid against his chest and makes a move as if to let go until he has no option but to take hold. The thing breathes and makes crying faces and squirms between his hands.

His thumbs depress the soft tissue of its skin. His right hand’s fingertips can feel the heartbeat through its back. It weighs more than he thought it would.

Brad can feel the woman's eyes on him too from his peripheral vision. He sees her nod as she takes a step back, takes the two of them in — her child, her conqueror. He wonders if this is what ancient kings felt when women held their babies up for them. He wonders if the president feels like this when he kisses babies in their strollers. He wonders if this is what his biological mother felt when she let him go, or if his real mother felt like this when she took him in.

He wonders these things, and he holds this baby, and it's warm under his hands, warmer than the sun on his exposed skin.

Ray walks by with a kid piggy-back riding him, her scarf catching across his neck, her smile pressing slightly against the faint burn scars on his cheek. "We're rollin' around in rugrats!" the man exclaims, his dimples showing. He sounds like he’s having a good time. But then again, Ray always seems to be having a good time while at war.

Brad holds the baby out a bit away from his Kevlar vest — isn't sure what he's rolled around in lately. He figures the kid's probably covered in germs of its own, but there’s no use in passing on the ones Brad has acquired through miles of this foreign terrain.

"Don't try to pretend you're any different from these ankle biters, Person," Brad replies. “You eat like a two year old, talk without any sense of tact, and you don’t seem to have reached puberty just yet — at least in height and sexual maturity.”

“I would say ‘fuck you,’ but there are minors present,” Ray says. “And don’t pretend you don’t love it. That kid, like, wants to call you daddy. It might be its first word.”

“I have no qualms about saying ‘fuck you too’ because the language barrier will protect their innocent ears,” Brad says, adjusting his hold under the baby’s armpits. It kicks its legs, and Brad stares at it, wondering what it wants.

Ray just shoots him a wide grin and bounces on his toes to get his own kid seated higher on his back. And then he's down the line.

Brad tries handing off the baby, but the woman takes another step back. He follows, and she leads him like that, step-by-step, her baby like a leash tethering Brad to her path.

“Baby got a dirty diaper or somethin’?” Brad turns his head, sees Poke watching him with amusement even though the man’s eyes are shaded by dark blue lenses.

“Excuse me?” Brad replies, pissed off. “You want to take a turn holding it?”

Poke grins, raises his hands disarmingly. “All yours, dawg. Just sayin’ — you gotta hold him with love. Look at his face. You’re pinching his arms. Cradle his ass with one hand and hold your other hand around his back so he knows you’ve got him,” he instructs.

Brad looks at him blankly, but then the baby kicks at his Kevlar again. He adjust his hold. The baby sits on his hand and plants one hand on the head of a magazine clip. It’s so much at odds with the image of other babies he’s been forced to be near, and when Poke laughs, Brad assumes the confusion shows on his face.

“Shut the fuck up,” Brad snaps. Poke doesn’t, of course. He laughs louder, and then he’s swinging kids onto his victor.

The baby’s mother slaps his arm, so he continues to follow her down the line. They’re halfway through the crowd when he spots the LT standing beside Gunny next to his victor. He feels their eyes on him, sees the slight quirk of a grin, a raised brow, hears Gunny’s laugh and looks away.

For some reason, though, this time he’s not thinking “Shut the fuck up.” He’s not sure what to do with that thought, and he forces the squirming baby back at the woman. She fumbles with it, but she has a small smile on her face as she nods at him. The baby’s eyes watch him from over her shoulder as she continues on her own.

He stands there, watching them. Doesn’t think about the lack of warmth in his hands, the lack of the slight pulse of a small heartbeat beneath his fingertips. He wraps his hands around the near-searing heat of his weapon. Walks on.

 

__

 

That night, they park at a POG camp. Brad’s team is put to bed, and he finds himself leaning against his humvee when the LT walks over and stands beside him. They watch the dark.

He thinks about how their time is up. He thinks about scrubbed missions, about doing his job, and his mind tracks through the day — the head on the road, the headless body, and somehow it all winds down to that moment back at the convoy when they were surrounded by a mass of civilians.

“Man, they’re prepping Baghdad hard,” the LT says.

Brad crosses his arms over his chest, glances past his shoulder at him. Nate looks over. Brad thinks absently that neither of them usually partakes in small talk. He watches the man’s face until Nate looks away again.

“And we're in a fucking POG camp,” Brad replies. “It's over for us. We won't be part of the show in Baghdad.”

It pours out of him. It could be that it’s pitch black and he can barely see the other man’s grime-covered face, green eyes, dirt and sweat and who knows what else masking skin like shadows.

“Yeah,” is all Nate says in response.

There is something in his tone of voice that sounds like he’s prompting Brad to speak. It could be that Brad’s held it in and so obviously needs an outlet. It could be that he’s found one. That one is being offered.

“This wasn't what we trained for,” Brad goes on. “I just wanted to get one real recon mission in this war. You know? Putting us in these is an affront to my warrior spirit. I'm a hunter, not a fucking truck driver corralling gun platforms.”

Here, Nate cuts in. “Brad, we were the fucking first boots on the ground in the American invasion of Mesopotamia. And you got your men out alive. Might be sad about not getting your mission, but for me — I got to tell you — I'm glad this is over.”

Brad watches Nate’s face. “One other thing,” Nate says. Brad takes in the tired eyes, the sudden, surprising, pull of a slight smile on the man’s lips. He feels something churn in his gut at that — something lighter, warmer, tighter. “No more cat holes. This fucking POG camp we're in has a legit slit trench latrine. Really.”

That’s a real grin, Brad thinks. He can’t help it when his own lips mirror it. The qualifier is unnecessary — as if Brad wouldn’t believe him. He reciprocates, concedes maybe: “That's my recon mission, then.”

He pushes off of the humvee’s hood, doesn’t look back. Hears echoing footsteps behind him as he walks away.

He stops by to speak to Poke. He is intercepted by Godfather. He goes to the latrine.

When he thinks of heat in his hands then, when he thinks of heartbeats, he doesn’t think of bodies in the road, doesn’t think of new life and small arms and kicking legs.

He stands there between four walls, thinks of darkness, of shadows, of heavy weights. Sees green eyes instead of brown, feels the warmth of a shoulder against his own instead of the warmth of a small body in his hands, tastes blood as he bites down on his lip too hard, but that’s all right. It’s born of want, not waste.

He came here looking for a mission. Afterward, he thinks he can make do with what he was given.

Takes a deep breath. Exhales slowly. Finds release.

 

**


End file.
